Social Q&A is the term for sites that build a community around question-answering. Yahoo! Answers is the best-known of these, but there are many others: WikiAnswers, Ask MetaFilter, Wikipedia Reference Desk, to name only a few. While these sites all operate with different policies, as a rule the way these sites work is that a user can submit a question, and other users can submit answers, and often there is a system for rating the best answer. It is difficult to arrive at a precise count of the volume of use that these sites receive, but all estimates indicate that it's a far greater volume than reference services receive.

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Social Q&A is the term for sites that build a community around question-answering. [http://answers.yahoo.com/ Yahoo! Answers] is the best-known of these, but there are many others: [http://wiki.answers.com/ WikiAnswers], [http://ask.metafilter.com/ Ask MetaFilter], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk Wikipedia Reference Desk], to name only a few. While these sites all operate with different policies, as a rule the way these sites work is that a user can submit a question, and other users can submit answers, and often there is a system for rating the best answer. It is difficult to arrive at a precise count of the volume of use that these sites receive, but all estimates indicate that it's a far greater volume than reference services receive.

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(As an aside, there is some debate about whether Google Answers counts as a social Q&A site, since users had to pay to get questions answered. Of course, it's a moot point, since Google Answers is now defunct... in part probably because users had to pay to get questions answered.)

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(As an aside, there is some debate about whether [http://answers.google.com/answers/ Google Answers] counts as a social Q&A site, since users had to pay to get questions answered. Of course, it's a moot point, since Google Answers is now defunct... in part probably because users had to pay to get questions answered.)

In 2007, a group of librarians got the idea that librarians should make themselves more of a presence on social Q&A sites, and began an informal effort called Slam the Boards! This is an effort to get librarians to answer as many questions as they can on social Q&A sites on the 10th of every month. Since StB began, however, it has diffused considerably: there is still a push on various listservs to drum up participation on the 10th of months, but as much or more librarian question-answering on social Q&A sites happens on other days.

In 2007, a group of librarians got the idea that librarians should make themselves more of a presence on social Q&A sites, and began an informal effort called Slam the Boards! This is an effort to get librarians to answer as many questions as they can on social Q&A sites on the 10th of every month. Since StB began, however, it has diffused considerably: there is still a push on various listservs to drum up participation on the 10th of months, but as much or more librarian question-answering on social Q&A sites happens on other days.

Revision as of 17:45, 28 September 2009

Background

Social Q&A is the term for sites that build a community around question-answering. Yahoo! Answers is the best-known of these, but there are many others: WikiAnswers, Ask MetaFilter, Wikipedia Reference Desk, to name only a few. While these sites all operate with different policies, as a rule the way these sites work is that a user can submit a question, and other users can submit answers, and often there is a system for rating the best answer. It is difficult to arrive at a precise count of the volume of use that these sites receive, but all estimates indicate that it's a far greater volume than reference services receive.

(As an aside, there is some debate about whether Google Answers counts as a social Q&A site, since users had to pay to get questions answered. Of course, it's a moot point, since Google Answers is now defunct... in part probably because users had to pay to get questions answered.)

In 2007, a group of librarians got the idea that librarians should make themselves more of a presence on social Q&A sites, and began an informal effort called Slam the Boards! This is an effort to get librarians to answer as many questions as they can on social Q&A sites on the 10th of every month. Since StB began, however, it has diffused considerably: there is still a push on various listservs to drum up participation on the 10th of months, but as much or more librarian question-answering on social Q&A sites happens on other days.

Assignment description

For this assignment you will gain experience with answering questions on social Q&A sites. You will answer 3 questions on 3 different sites: select social Q&A sites from the Registry of Answer Boards or use one not listed (but if you do that, please add it to the Registry).

There are no hard-and-fast rules for how to compose an answer on social Q&A sites, though most sites articulate a set of guidelines and have some policies for policing behavior and resolving disputes (e.g., Yahoo! Answer's Community Guidelines, WikiAnswers' Help Center, etc.). Find and read the guidelines on the site you are answering on. Also, the StB-ers have developed a set of Tips and Tricks for answering questions on social Q&A sites.

Claim a question, compose an answer, & submit it. If your answer is the first for a question, great. If you want to answer a question that already has previous answers, fine, but make sure that your contribution adds new information to the answer and does not just repeat what other answerers have contributed. Monitor the question that you claimed for a day or so, to see if there is any discussion or disagreement among answerers, and if there is, contribute to that discussion as appropriate.

Create a post on the blog with a link to the question that you answered, and a brief description of the question and the sources in which you found an answer.